


am i gonna feel this way 4ever?

by gigglingaesthetic



Category: Summer of ‘84 (2018)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Bisexuality, Character Study, F/M, Growing Up, M/M, farraday and eats are the endgame dont fear, i think, mentions of the AIDS crisis but it’s unimportant to the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 10:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16016336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigglingaesthetic/pseuds/gigglingaesthetic
Summary: Despite how happy he feels, in the back of his mind, he wishes he could feel like this all the time. He wishes he could be normal.A study in Eats’ bisexuality.





	am i gonna feel this way 4ever?

**Author's Note:**

> tbh im not really sure what a character study is but i think this is it? i wanted to go deeper into his character but not make it too angsty.
> 
> title from ‘4EVER’ by clairo

**I.**

He’s fourteen when he finds the magazines in his house. The first one is in his brother’s room. Kyle’s out with his asshole friends somewhere, probably cruising in his shitty car and drinking beer from the stash hidden in the glove compartment. 

Eats would be lying if he said he wasn’t jealous. Kyle may be a grade A dick and a deadbeat nineteen year old still living in his parents basement and working the same minimum wage job he’s had since he was sixteen, but he has a car and alcohol, two things Eats is desperate for. Not like Kyle would ever share anything with him.

But his brother is out, and his parents are too, his mom with her friend Linda and his dad at work, so Eats sneaks into Kyle’s room. Kyle has a stash of something in here, he knows, some fucking type of liquor, whether it’s whiskey or whatever the fuck.

He ducks down to check under Kyle’s bed, and that’s when he finds it. It’s a Boudoir magazine, full of naked women front to back. 

Eats isn’t dumb, or a fucking pansy. He knows what porn is and has known what it is for longer than his friends have. He thumbs through it appreciatively, then tucks it under his arm. Kyle hopefully won’t notice it’s missing.

Eats curses under his breath as he remembers something that renders his venture so far useless. His mother had been yelling at Kyle yesterday morning about finding his beer. She’d taken it (for herself to drink, no doubt.)

With a sigh, Eats heads down the hall to his parents room. It’s a disaster as usual, from things being thrown during fights and messy, unmade sheets that Eats doesn’t want to think about. Unaware that history is about to repeat itself, he flings open his mom’s closet door and starts rooting around behind her clothes. His fingers hit paper.

He pulls out a Playgirl. The cover is three shirtless, muscular men. Eats feels a swirling in the pit of his stomach, and he’s all too aware of what it means.

He opens the magazine. It’s exactly what he suspects it is, full of naked guys in compromising positions. He closes his eyes for a brief second. 

_Shit. Shit, shit, shit._

Eats snaps the magazine closed, throws it back into her closet and slams the doors. He bolts into the hallway and tears into his bedroom, slamming the door.

He doesn’t go back to look for it again.

 

**II.**

Jennifer Macleod is hot. Her hair smells like oranges and looks like a cloud the sun is setting behind, soft and red-gold. She wears it in a high, swinging ponytail and pairs the hairstyle with a deep green skirt the same shade as her eyes, and she lets him take her on a date to Ipswich Lanes. He knows it’s partly to piss her dad off, because Eats looks like he’s stepped out of a poster advertising the boy you don’t want your daughter to date. But he doesn’t really mind being used, because it’s January 1984 and he’s fifteen, and, as stated before, she’s hot, even with the black glasses she swears she only needs for reading the scores on the display. He wishes she’d wear them more. She reminds him of something. Someone.

She’s his first kiss. Although he hasn’t lied to his friends about rounding third base on vacation yet, this is something he’ll actually be truthful about. 

He’s bought her a cherry cola from the shitty food counter, and she’s just won a strike (he’s losing, badly), when she stands on her tiptoes and kisses him full on the lips. They taste like sugar and they’re almost as soft as her hair, which he winds a hand into. It’s a little bit awkward and he doesn’t really know what to do with his tongue, but it’s nice. 

She pulls back and smiles at him sweetly, and he feels a tug in his chest, a soft little ache. He knows she won’t follow through with another date, and he doesn’t really mind. It’s the happiest he’s felt in quite a while. 

Despite how happy he feels, in the back of his mind, he wishes he could feel like this all the time. 

He wishes he could be normal. 

 

**III.**

Woody’s dead. That weird, bad summer is over and school’s started again and they took down the treehouse. Farraday has new glasses, Davey doesn’t talk as much. Things are bad different.

Eats is hanging out with a kid named Matt, because they have a stupid English project together. They’re in Matt’s room, Eats on the floor and Matt on the bed. Eats is lying on his back, clicking his tongue, and he can’t see what Matt is doing.

He hears a cough. He doesn’t move.

Another two coughs. He sits up.

“Jesus Christ, you got fucking bronchitis?” Eats asks. He’s only mildly annoyed, he’s mostly doing this to string Matt along, as it was clear the boy wanted his intention.

“N-no,” Matt’s voice is now much closer.

Eats turns his head and his eyebrows shoot up. Matt is now sitting on the ground beside him in very close proximity. Eats finds that any and all words have suddenly evaporated from the tip of his tongue. 

Matt leans in and kisses him.

Eats responds instinctively. He kisses back. Matt’s lips move carefully against his own, and the tiny bit of stubble on his jaw is scratchy. He puts his hand on Eats’ forearm. It’s— it’s nice. Eats realizes this and panics. 

_Holy shit, he’s kissing a guy and he likes it, he fucking likes it._

Matt pulls away, and Eats fights the urge to bury his face in his hands.

“Fuck.” He breathes. “I...I fucking can’t. I’m sorry.”

“You did it back,” Matt replies in a small voice, and Eats doesn’t miss his refusal to say the word kiss, to admit the abnormalcy. Eats looks at him.

Matt’s hair is too red. His eyes are blue. He doesn’t have glasses.

“I know,” Eats says. “I’m sorry.”

 

**IV.**

The two of them are in New York now, and it’s a different world than suburban Oregon.

Eats knows what’s going on, that they’re reaching the height of a crisis, a disease that gay men get from fucking, a disease that kills. AIDS.

Obviously it’s not just gay men who get it. Ruby, the straight bartender at _Tom’s_ (and one of his close friends) has it, and Mark, his also very heterosexual co-worker, has it. But Eats is suddenly extremely careful with his hook-ups. Despite what he used to think when he was younger, sex isn’t worth dying for.

But he still goes out. Still brings people home sometimes.

Eats is so drunk he forgets Farraday even lives with him, so when he stumbles into the house with a guy’s lips on his neck one night, he stops dead in the doorway. Farraday is sitting on the couch, textbook open on his lap, blinking owlishly at him through the glasses he now only wears to read.

“Um,” Eats says eloquently, but in his defense he’s in a drunken stupor. Farraday says absolutely nothing, only looking right at him, mouth hanging open in shock. Eats blinks dumbly. “I’m not gay,” he says.

“Come on,” the guy behind him says, and tugs Eats down the hall toward the bedrooms. Eats goes with him, but imprinted behind his eyes is the expression on Farraday’s face.

When Eats wakes up the next morning, the guy is gone and he’s only mildly hungover, his tolerance for drinking always having been incredibly high. For a moment, a flashback shudders over him, a lady’s disdainful voice. _The Eatons are only good at one thing. Drinking._

He shakes his head, turning over and pressing his face into his pillow. Maybe if he just lies here forever, he’ll never have to face Farraday again.

He’d been too put-off to do anything with the guy, so they’d both just fallen asleep, backs to each other. The guy had snored. He’d been nice about Eats stopping anything, and he’d been really attractive. And Eats hadn’t fucking got his number. He doesn’t really feel upset about it though, not in the way he maybe should, and his mind flits back to Farraday’s face.

His stomach growls, and _fuck_ , he has to get up. Fucking shit.

He throws on an old black muscle tee and a pair of dirty jeans, and steps into the hallway. Farraday’s bedroom door is open. He’s up. A faint, fleeting hope lights inside of him that maybe Farraday has gone out, but that hope dies when he sees his jacket and shoes still by the door. 

Eats makes his way into the living room and he sees Farraday at the table, eating what looks like eggs on toast. Avoiding the other boy’s gaze, he pauses by the stove to see an egg still in the frying pan and two pieces of toast in the toaster. There’s a pinch in his chest, and he ignores it as he grabs a plate from the dish rack.

He stiffly sits down across from Farraday, feeling his best friend’s eyes burning into his head. He pointedly looks at his plate and then begins eating his breakfast as quickly as possible. It’s silent until he finishes, and as he stands up to put his plate in the sink, Farraday speaks.

“Eats.” He says the word softly, but there’s a sternness in his voice that makes Eats freeze. “Sit down.”

_Fuck._

Eats sits down, eyes fixed on his empty plate, moving from crumb to crumb like a connect-the-dots puzzle.

“Look at me.”

Eats glances up. Farraday’s eyes aren’t pitiful, or disgusted, or anything he feared. They’re calm and steady. He’s clearly gotten over the shock of the night before. His gaze traps Eats’ like tractor beams from the UFOs Davey used to be obsessed with when they were younger.

“I’m not mad. I get why you didn’t tell me.”

“I’m not gay,” Eats blurts out again. “I mean, fuck, I like.. I like both.” It’s not the most eloquent way of phrasing it, but it’s like a weight has been thrown off of his shoulders as Farraday’s expression goes from understanding to confused to understanding again. He nods.

“I wish you’d told me,” Farraday says, and Eats’ throat is dry. “I-I know how you feel.”

Eats’ eyes widen, because _holy fuck, what?_

“You have to be fucking careful,” Farraday says. “You know what’s—”

“I didn’t sleep with him.” Eats interrupts. “I couldn’t.”

Farraday looks surprised. “Why?”

_You, Eats wants to say. Fuck, it’s always been you._

Instead, he says “I didn’t know his name,” because it’s true, even if it’s the wrong truth. 

Farraday sighs. “Be careful,” and that’s that. Eats is pretty sure Farraday just came out to him over eggs and toast and vice versa, and he’s okay with it. He’s more than okay with it.

 

**V.**

It’s 1989. Eats is twenty, and they’re still in the shitty apartment, and he still feels lost, and he’s still in love with his best friend, and Ruby died in November, and things aren’t great. But it’s spring break and he and Farraday are driving back to Oregon in the same car in which they escaped from it. Davey’s gonna be there and they’re staying in Farraday’s house because his parents are visiting relatives in Florida, so they have a free house and a free liquor cabinet. This is good because despite the fake IDs they may have, everyone in this town knows them and they’re still not old enough to drink.

Davey has a girlfriend in Seattle, Eats can’t remember her name but he’s pretty sure it starts with an S (he’ll later be reminded that it’s Stella) and she’s majoring in English. He talks on the phone with Davey once a week, but after Ruby died, Eats and Farraday didn’t go home for Christmas, so he hasn’t seen his friend since the summer.

There’s tight hugs and lots of laughter. Davey’s tall and seems to glow. Eats is pretty sure that the three of them haven’t been this happy in a long time. 

They end up going to Ipswich Lanes, because hell yeah, good times. They take the car instead of their bikes, but Farraday wears his glasses instead of his contacts. Looking at him, Eats feels five years younger.

It looks exactly the same. Sure, there’s a new DJ in the booth, and they’ve painted the old, worn food tables, but he still feels like he’s gone back in time, on his first date with—

“Jennifer Macleod?” He asks in disbelief. A young adult version of the girl is standing there, red-gold hair cropped to just above her shoulders, green skirt traded for a pair of blue jeans and a striped top. She’s not wearing glasses, but her soft, delicate smile is exactly the same.

He makes his way over to her, and the two devolve into a corny catch-up conversation. She’s in town visiting her mother and childhood friends, instead of heading to Vegas with her college buddies. She’s studying Greek Mythology in Texas.

Eats sees Davey flip him off out of the corner of his eye, and he tells Jennifer he should get back. She bids him farewell, standing on her tiptoes to press her ruby-red lips in a lingering kiss to his cheek.

When Eats turns around, he sees Davey with raised eyebrows and Farraday, gaze firmly fixed on the ground. Eats frowns, but heads back over to his friends.

(Farraday crushes the two of them at bowling. He throws strikes and spares with the most aggression Eats has ever seen him possess. He’s half-dumbfounded, half turned on.)

Later, they’re all slouched around Farraday’s living room, a bottle of whiskey sitting on the carpet. None of them are drunk, just a little loosened up. They’re laughing about old times, exhausted and giddy. Farraday is lying next to Eats on the floor, while Davey is draped over the couch, yawning.

Eats’ eyes go wide as he feels a hand slide into his.

He spins his head faster than humanely possible. Farraday is looking at him, twenty years old but with the same nervous eyes he had at fifteen, and Eats feels that familiar tug in his chest. Farraday’s wearing his glasses. His hair is just the right shade of red.

Eats intertwines their fingers. 

For all his hookups, this feels like the most intimate moment he’s ever had in his life. Farraday visibly relaxes, a youthful smile brightening his face, blinding even in the dim light. This is right.

Twenty minutes later, Davey seems to be asleep, and Farraday and Eats sneak up to Farraday’s old room. It’s unchanged, but they aren’t. They sit on his stupid twin-size mattress and they kiss. They kiss and they kiss and they kiss, and it feels like burning and drowning and dying and living all at once. 

For someone who Eats has never seen with a significant other, Farraday is surprisingly good at this. But then again, Eats is pretty sure Farraday could stick his tongue up Eats’ nostril and claim it was how you made out, and Eats would decide he was perfect.

They’re in the middle of a softer kiss, Farraday’s hands on his waist and Eats’ hand in his hair, when the door bangs against the wall.

The two jump apart. Davey is standing there, a traumatized expression on his face. He looks like he wants to sink into the floor. Eats wants to invite him to join the club.

“Um, I was gonna see what you guys were doing up here,” he begins, “but now I wish I hadn’t. Please don’t fuck while I’m under this roof.”

He closes the door, and Eats turns back to Farraday, pulling him closer again. He’s tired of waiting, tired of denying himself what he wants. He feels free. And that’s close enough to normal for him.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! this turned out shittier and more rushed than i intended it to, but i hope you enjoyed!


End file.
